Ways of Reading Third Edition - Martin Montgomery, Alan Durant, Nigel Fabb, Tom Furniss, Sara Mills 2007

6.2 How characters (and the narrator) speak
Unit 6 Language and place
Section 2 Language variation

In tandem with description of this kind, a sense of place can also be conveyed by how characters (and the narrator, where there is one) are made to speak. Such representation in a written text calls on the association we make between recognizable differences in grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation and how we suppose people speak in different places.

Creating a sense of place by incorporating particular, regional speech mannerisms can be more problematic than description of place, however. Written representations of dialect or accent draw on conventional - sometimes stereotypical - images and connotations for varieties of language, since it is such images and connotations that can be relied on to prompt a response. However, while such images permit vivid associations of voice with place, in doing so they trade on received ideas and contrasts, for instance the notion that some regional voices are more naive, stranger, rougher, more erotic or more authoritative than others.